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Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

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Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#171

Post by ayngg »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #122
ayngg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of unskilled labor is probably much lower than everyone wants to think it is in a global economy. There is no incentive to pay workers in developed countries "fair" wages when that labor can be done at a fraction of the cost in the developing world. Service sector jobs are probably hit by this because while they cant be outsourced, all the other employment going elsewhere just means they have leverage. Some…

> Some places like Canada even import developing world labor to work these jobs because they cant find local employers for the wages they offer. This might be naive of me, but is it equally valid to say that these Canadian employers are only paying such low wages because they have access to cheap migrant labor from poorer countries who are willing to work for less pay than local labor? Without access to their existin…

I think that is largely the case in some circumstances. Specifically in agriculture, fast food and meat packing the temporary foreign worker program is used to hire people who will work for less than what Canadians consider fair, either purely based on compensation, or a combination of compensation and qualification.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#172

Post by SauciestGNU »

sophacles wrote: post #105
fred_is_fred wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If lower-paid people had more income they would be paying down debt, buying a better used car, paying for daycare, and maybe going on a trip or to. Personal shoppers and life coaches I think kick in a lot higher than you do.

At first they would pay down debt, and buy a car that actually works, and other stuff that should have always just been available to them. Once that debt is paid off, and the car is not a constant source of worry - they have money to do those other things. For example going on a trip is the same type of "luxury" as shoppers, life coaches, etc - its spending money on something other survival.

I often think of how many ordinary working people would be able to do more than just tread water and actually begin to build some wealth if there weren't rent seekers built into nearly every necessity for sustaining human life. As a society I believe we need to re-evaluate the relationship between profit-seeking entities and public goods.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#173

Post by tcmart14 »

BuckRogers wrote: post #98
dnautics wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Instead of the employer/owner running your gas station, the employees that actually work it have 1 share each." This is laughably naive. The power, then, devolves to whosoever authority gets to conjure the legal definition of "actual work". How can I be that person, and how can then use my power to enrich my friends and cronies and screw BuckRogers over? After all, all employees are equal, but some employees are equ…

Calling the idea "laughably naive" doesn't seem appropriate when many businesses today are ran this way, some of them producing billions of dollars a year. That makes me question your age, as anyone with some life experience knows about worker co-ops. They're all over the western world. GE and Microsoft are fully aware of them, they've researched this extensively, sending representatives around the globe to figure ou…

Not to mention worker-owned companies and co-ops have shown to be able to weather economic uncertainty better. I will say, with the limited data we have. There is some truth that in America, various things rig organizing a company around the idea of co-ops and worker owned, so there are not many and not an abundance of data to be had on this. But the example we do have internationally, they tend to show that they weather the boom and bust cycles better.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#174

Post by black_13 »

Auracle wrote: post #142
black_13 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get tired of hearing the term “unskilled labor” all labor is labor.

“Unskilled labor” is labor that almost anyone can do, therefore it is worth less.

And anyone can do javascript.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#175

Post by ashtonkem »

BobbyJo wrote: post #22
ranma4703 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that companies pay based on productivity, or based on the minimum amount they need to pay in order to attract workers? If the former, do you believe that if a remote worker moves from NYC to Idaho, and their employer cuts their pay by 25%, it is because their productivity has dropped by 25%? Or because their employer knows they can get away with paying them less in an area with lower cost of living / les…

> Do you think that companies pay based on productivity, or based on the minimum amount they need to pay in order to attract workers? It's both. Productivity has a very direct effect on the minimum amount they need to attract workers. If a low skilled worker can produce 100$ an hour of value, and you're paying them 10$ and hour, someone else will very quickly be willing to pay them 11$, or 12$, etc. Suddenly, you hav…

> If a low skilled worker can produce 100$ an hour of value, and you're paying them 10$ and hour, someone else will very quickly be willing to pay them 11$, or 12$, etc.

You’re ignoring worker supply. If there are more workers than jobs available, wages will remain low regardless how productive they are. If there are few workers available the price of their labor will rise as employers try to outbid each other for the labor. Supply & demand for labor controls which side of the equation ends up in a bidding war for the other side.

The productivity of labor doesn’t set the price of labor, if that were true then labor saving devices would drive wages up, which they clearly do not. Rather it’s supply and demand that sets wages, with productivity setting the ceiling since few employers want to hire people at a loss.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#176

Post by ashtonkem »

BobbyJo wrote: post #137
pydry wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's both. Productivity has a very direct effect on the minimum amount they need to attract workers. Productivity only puts a ceiling on the amount they'd be prepared to pay for a worker. It doesn't affect the minimum amount required to attract them. That's determined by competition (i.e. who else is out there) and leverage (how much they need the job). This is why business leaders lobby hard to reduce public sector…

Your second paragraph refutes your first. Productivity is an input to the supply of competition, so it does more than create a ceiling, it also serves as an upward force on the floor. Do business leaders lobby to reduce public sector wages and benefits? That's not something I've heard before. In any case, whether or not there is competition from the government, if there is a gap between productivity and wages, then t…

> Productivity is an input to the supply of competition, so it does more than create a ceiling, it also serves as an upward force on the floor.

This is trivially disprovable. Did grocery stores increase the wages of their clerks once self checkout was a thing, or did they keep wages the same and lay off some of them?

Productivity only affects wages when there’s competition for labor, not when there’s competition for jobs. When there’s competition for jobs productivity gains are captured by the company, not the laborer.

> Do business leaders lobby to reduce public sector wages and benefits?

They absolutely do, yes. I’m genuinely baffled how you’ve never heard this. The Chamber of Commerce crowd is always trying to shrink governments (and their tax bills), and attacking public unions is a big part of this.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#178

Post by xupybd »

dangus wrote: post #42
xupybd wrote: post #3

How much of this increase in productivity is the result of off shoring low wage jobs?

Why would overseas workers be counted in a measure of US worker productivity?

If a US company has higher revenue then they appear more productive. It could be that they have reached that productivity by using off shore workers.

So the number of people indirectly involved in the US economy has increased.

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#179

Post by Jensson »

pessimizer wrote: post #128
agitator wrote: post #44

I'm struggling to understand how productivity has anything to do with salary. Productivity increases are inevitable for everything as automation keeps improving. Salaries go up with demand for skills. If its more difficult to hire for a critical role (a skilled job or competitive), or the role generates a lot of value for a company, salaries go up. Simple economics. Low skill jobs and physical labor jobs actually req…

> Salaries go up with demand for skills. Said while business owners are screaming about a labor shortage.

And said labor shortage is how competition for workers and wages go up, what is strange about this?

Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity

#180

Post by Jensson »

black_13 wrote: post #174
Auracle wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Unskilled labor” is labor that almost anyone can do, therefore it is worth less.

And anyone can do javascript.

Companies wouldn't pay people who can do javascript six figure salaries if anyone could do javascript. Even if anyone could be trained to do javascript, that training still limits who you can hire to do the work today. Unskilled jobs means they require near zero training to do it, so a random person off the streets would deliver value within hours of starting.
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